In praise of… cancelling Kingsnorth

It may seem curmudgeonly to sprinkle our meagre daily measure of praise upon the negation of something: the fact that a plan is not going ahead. Every so often, however, there are ideas so bad that jubilation is the only response when they are seen off. E.ON's desire to build a new coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth – which we learned this week will happen no time soon – is surely a case in point. The climate poison that would have belched from its stacks was of course a concern in itself, but the greater anxiety was the dreadful example that would have been set. For Britain to have built its first coal-fired power station in decades without meaningful carbon capture being built into the design would have granted developing countries moral licence to follow suit. The building commercial pressure to develop the all-important sequestration technology would also have been retarded. The recession is E.ON's stated reason for, ahem, pulling the plug on its electric ambitions. The awkward squad of activists who have variously agitated, camped and campaigned over two years will take some persuading that this account represents the whole truth. They have endured sleep deprivation, airport-style searches and, in a few cases, being put under police surveillance. They might reflect that when male MPs finally granted women the vote, their magnanimous speeches did not find the room to thank Emmeline Pankhurst for cutting telegraph cables or to praise Emily Davison for throwing herself under the king's horse.